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I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.

They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?

When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."

SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.

You arent talking about EQ either.

Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.

When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.

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I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.

They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?

When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."

SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.

You arent talking about EQ either.

Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.

When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.

Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.

EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.

All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.

MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before

Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.

SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.

PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P

DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?

And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.

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I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.

They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?

When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."

SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.

You arent talking about EQ either.

Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.

When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.

Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.

EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.

All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.

MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before

Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.

SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.

PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P

DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?

And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.

How long is it going to take people, like yourself, to realize that there's NOTHING wrong with F2P. 99% of all games in the past, present, and future are going with the F2P model... Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!

Don't even mention WoW and that it's not F2P... The game has enough subs to not even make blizzard care about their payment model... They're in cruise control mode right now and milking WoW for every thing it has left. all they need to do is release content patches every half year and an expansion every 3-4 years.

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Originally posted by truthhurts

Originally posted by NaughtyP

SOE is always one step forward, one step backward to me. Honestly, I think they really want to do right by gamers for the most part. But it's the constant major screwups (SWG NGE, Vanguard, big security debacles, etc.) that sour people on SOE. If they kept their stuff in order for a few years without any major screwups, and released quality games during that time, there is no doubt in my mind they would "repair" their image quickly.

SWG NGE = no one knows how much SoE was involved. All signs point to mostly LA

Vanguard = SoE did nothing wrong here, they developed the game for 18 months while taking a loss, then got tired of taking a loss...what is the negative here?

Big security debacles = Trion and Blizzard have had security issues too. this is an industry wide issue

SoE has some negatives for sure, but some people want to hate them so bad they can't think logically.

I would have to say you might technically correct on most counts here. I shouldn't say they are to blame for everything, but they are guilty by association. Just because they didn't cause all of the problems directly, it doesn't mean they can sit on the sidelines blameless. Not being part of the solution is almost as bad as being the problem itself. Some of these things should have been caught well before games hit the shelves.

As for the security problems, it may or may not be an issue for many game companies, but everyone doing something wrong isn't an excuse for you to do it wrong too.

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Given past history, I'd not trust SOE to pour water out of a boot, if the directions had been printed on the boots sole. ^^ The idea that they could create a decent "sand box" game (which tends to be more difficult than a theme park) doesn't even pass the snicker test.

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I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.

They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?

When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."

SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.

You arent talking about EQ either.

Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.

When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.

Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.

EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.

All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.

MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before

Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.

SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.

PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P

DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?

And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.

People still play EQ and EQ2. They still develop for those games.

[mod edit] you said they put games into maintanence mode when they get old, I completely disproved that by mentioning EQ isnt in maintanence mode.

They only put games into maintenance mode when people stop playing them.

You tried to put down the company by saying they do the bare minimum, but you don't want to face the reality that they operated VG at a loss for 18 months while they fixed up Sigil's mess. Yeah, eventually they gave up...but can you blame them? Would you keep taking a loss?

So instead of admitting that you were wrong you just try to sidetrack things into unrelated arguments.[mod edit] you CAN focus on the fact that outside of Eq and EQ2 nobody plays their games. They havent released a noteable game in 8 years, but people that have been playing PS2 seem to signal that the drought is over.

And just to put things in perspective: during primetime all 10 of EQ2's NA servers hit medium pop. Only 5 of Rift's hit medum pop. (A few of those servers go over 1,000 players and I doubt any of EQ2s do though, so Rift does have a larger playerbase than EQ2...but its closer than most think)

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Originally posted by NaughtyP

Originally posted by truthhurts

Originally posted by NaughtyP

SOE is always one step forward, one step backward to me. Honestly, I think they really want to do right by gamers for the most part. But it's the constant major screwups (SWG NGE, Vanguard, big security debacles, etc.) that sour people on SOE. If they kept their stuff in order for a few years without any major screwups, and released quality games during that time, there is no doubt in my mind they would "repair" their image quickly.

SWG NGE = no one knows how much SoE was involved. All signs point to mostly LA

Vanguard = SoE did nothing wrong here, they developed the game for 18 months while taking a loss, then got tired of taking a loss...what is the negative here?

Big security debacles = Trion and Blizzard have had security issues too. this is an industry wide issue

SoE has some negatives for sure, but some people want to hate them so bad they can't think logically.

I would have to say you might technically correct on most counts here. I shouldn't say they are to blame for everything, but they are guilty by association. Just because they didn't cause all of the problems directly, it doesn't mean they can sit on the sidelines blameless. Not being part of the solution is almost as bad as being the problem itself. Some of these things should have been caught well before games hit the shelves.

As for the security problems, it may or may not be an issue for many game companies, but everyone doing something wrong isn't an excuse for you to do it wrong too.

That's about as logical as I'll try to get for one day.

I don't think they are completely blameless either on the NGE and security points, Vanguard...they did more good than bad for that game, there are people that enjoy VG and VG never would have seen the light of day without SoE. About the only thing they really could have done is made VG f2p a lot sooner.

But neither thing is something you can really hold against SoE going forward. There is absolutely zero chance of a NGE ever happening again. And their security holes seem fixed, Im sure anonymous would have loved for them not to have been.

I do think the company has some terrible communication within its ranks, and I think this stems from the parent company. Sony is the bigger issue than SoE, and thats not something thats gonna go away.

I don't like how smokejumper handled EQ2 which is a big concern for EQNext

SoE games ALWAYS run like shit.

I would prefer for EQN a strict p2p model, which probably isnt going to happen

But I see no reason to trust their next product any less than any other company besides Anet or Trion.

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Most people, including myself before today, forget about Free Realms. I had disregarded it as a B rate kids game but from what I've looked into there is a lot to the game and a lot of people playing.

I think it's easy to see that at the end of the day SoE has to run a business. They've had their hands in all sorts of game for different reasons with varied results. No other company can sport the same size of catalog outside made for F2P cookie cutter games. It's no surprise they would have a varied track record.

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Voted no, their greed is everlasting and will ruin every game they touch. Take a look at some of their F2P maticies on their more popular games and compare it to other F2P companies. It's sad as is SoE.

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Originally posted by JimmyYOVoted no, their greed is everlasting and will ruin every game they touch. Take a look at some of their F2P maticies on their more popular games and compare it to other F2P companies. It's sad as is SoE.

If you look at SoE's f2p matrices and think 'wow they are greedy', then you suck pretty badly at analyzing things. Consider the amount of content EQ and EQ2 have...If they had charged for that like Turbine does it would be *far* more costly to play as a non subscriber than it is now.

You can argue it feels more restrictive or they should have done Turbine's model, but if you try to argue it is more greedy you are just flat out wrong.

I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.

They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?

When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."

SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.

You arent talking about EQ either.

Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.

When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.

Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.

EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.

All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.

MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before

Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.

SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.

PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P

DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?

And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.

How long is it going to take people, like yourself, to realize that there's NOTHING wrong with F2P. 99% of all games in the past, present, and future are going with the F2P model... Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!

F2P is largely the payment model of last resort. Virtually all of the P2P converted to F2P games changed over because it was a choice of doing that, or closing. Or as a last ditch attempt to make some money off a title or to recoup expenses in developing the game in the first place. Name one AAA up to now that was designed F2P from go.

There aren't any.

And frankly, those former P2P titles had little to lose in converting, so long as their initial development costs were paid: it costs almost nothing to keep a "developed" MMO going. So any revenue is good enough.

As to SOE, their "F2P implementation" is among the worst in the industry. They don't want people to play their games F2P at all, that is clear from the model, they make F2P access as crappy as possible in order to make people pay for the freemium upgrade. To the point that they won't let you use the toons/equipment you had previous acquired when being a "paying customer".

SOE won't even let people pay for sub time with their own SOE Smedbucks anymore, and that was their own scam to begin with.

Fortunately, as the years have going on, SOE has become less and less relevant in gaming circles.